In Praise of Procrastination

Are you one of the many millions of people in the world who put off for tomorrow what could be done today?  Do you find ever more creative ways to avoid doing what you want to do or need to do in life?  Have you perfected the art of mindless avoidance?

Congratulations!  You are a Master of Procrastination.  You have learnt some terrific skills in creativity, problem solving and self care.  At some level, your procrastination is looking after you.  If you are happy with keeping your skills at their present level, then I suggest you stop reading this article.  If you want to build your skills to a new high, and possibly channel them to serve you better, then keep on reading.

Many articles on beating procrastination assume that you need better time management.  At the risk of being branded a heretic, that is not your problem.  The most creative procrastinators know precisely what needs to be done, they just find ways not to do it.

Why do people procrastinate?

• Too hard—humans naturally like the easy option.  If something seems hard, we often prefer to go with things that are easy to do.

• Takes too much time—the job you need to do will take 2 hours.  You know you only have small chunks of time easily available in your schedule (or you make sure your schedule has no blocks of time available to do the work).  This means that you have to put off doing the job.

• Priorities unclear— if you don’t know what your goals and priorities are in life, then it makes it easy to fill time in with “busyness” rather than productivity.

• Priorities unwanted—this links to the previous point.  If the priorities you are working to are not your own or you can’t “buy into them”, it is very hard to get motivated to start something.

• Boredom—you know what to do, you have done it a thousand times before.  What is different this time?

• Perfectionism—if you are going to do something, your belief (or the belief of your boss) is that it has to be 100% perfect all the time every time.  Setting such a high benchmark guarantees failure and sets up dissatisfaction and frustration.  It also can overwhelm the perfectionist—because why bother starting something—it is going to take heaps of energy to keep correcting things when they go wrong.

• Anger at someone else—sometimes your procrastination is more about you being angry at someone else than about the task.  You may believe that you are not being recognized sufficiently for what you are doing or you are not feeling supported, so you in effect “go on strike” without knowing you are doing it.

• Self sabotage—have you ever been at the brink of success only to find yourself struck by a huge bout of procrastinationitis? You could be sabotaging your success without knowing why.

• Poor self esteem—you talk yourself into failure with language such as “I never do things right”, “I am so stupid, what’s the point”.

• Difficulty concentrating—Life happens.  You fall in love, you break up, people die, you have money worries.  All rob your mind of focus.  If you can’t concentrate, it can appear easier to put things off rather than deal with them at the time.

• Afraid of what others may think/do—this is a common reason people avoid having difficult conversations—you may be worried that the person may become angry or cry and you won’t be able to handle it.

• Afraid of what you may need to do—part of you knows that if you openly and honestly look into yourself or the decision needing to be made, then the outcome may be quite life changing.  This happens a lot with people who are dissatisfied in their chosen career or relationship—it is easier to avoid, than face the reality of maybe it is time to move on.

• Stress—when under stress, some personality types procrastinate more than others as a defense mechanism.

• Surrounded by clutter—your physical environment often reflects your mind.  If you are stuck in a mound of clutter at work, the car or at home, then chances are your mind is cluttered and stuck also.

• Habit—you learnt that this was the way to handle difficult situations somewhere in the past, so you automatically go into that behaviour at the slightest whiff of trouble.

What do you do about it?

There is a simple six step process to channel the skills you have used in procrastinating towards something more positive

1. Realise that you are doing it and it is unnecessary.  Know that you have the resources and skill within you to tackle anything life throws at you.
2. Discover the real reasons for your procrastination.  To do this ask yourself:
3. How is this behaviour looking after me? 
4. What don’t I have to be or do as a result of this behaviour? 
5. What attention do I get for not doing the task?
6. Work out if the belief or feeling about the task is real or imagined.  Check your history to find times of successfully doing the thing you are avoiding (don’t look for a long list of failures—we are only looking for successes here!).
7. Argue against the delay. Once you know what you are doing and why, argue convincingly against the delay.  If the arguments outweigh the reasons, then you will do it.
8. Do it! Recognition won’t do the task—only you can do it. Use all the skills you have learnt in creative problem solving to avoid the task, to help you to actually do it.
9. Do it again.  You are not perfect.  Accept setbacks and backsliding as normal and try again.

Ingrid Cliff is a Brisbane based Business Development and Human Resources Consultant to Small and Medium Businesses with her company Heart Harmony www.heartharmony.com.au.